I have been to dinner at the New York theatre and its table manners are simply appalling. In Joe Turner's Come and Gone, a suffering man disregards his delicious fried chicken, clambers on to the table to holler against his fate and then opens his fly. Meanwhile, at The Norman Conquests, everyone is complaining about the food, and an indigestible stew is splashed on several unlucky audience members.

In 33 Variations, a mother interrupts a pleasant evening at a restaurant to reveal her plans for euthanasia. Postprandial coffee and liqueurs are ruined by the arrival of an interfering spirit in Blithe Spirit and by petulant argument and sexual disaster in The Philanthropist. Worse brawls accompany the dinner at August: Osage County.

Dinner and theatre is always a difficult mix. It forces the audience to have a rushed meal too early or a more leisurely one too late. (Of course, there's "dinner theatre", but that constitutes its own separate torment.) On stage, the characters don't seem to enjoy it much either. It's difficult to think of many – really, any – plays in which characters get up from the table having enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Much more often, dinner is merely an opportunity for revelation and recrimination. If there's a dessert course, cake is far more likely to end up on the face than in the mouth.

Drama has always liked a good food fight. The earliest example I can conjure is the feast in Seneca's Thyestes at which a delicious pie (made of chopped-up children) is served to the guest of honour. (Shakespeare adopted that gruesome gourmandising in Titus Andronicus.) Theatre has typically followed this form, in which a seemingly pleasant repast soon turns frightening and violent. It's an easy step from Seneca to Sarah Kane's Blasted – also seen on New York stages this year – in which a character munches on a baby, no pie crust required.

As drama has moved from the political stage to the domestic sphere, a supper party is a plausible way to bring many characters together in the same scene, without its feeling forced. There's still a ritualistic resonance when characters break bread together, and a sense of communion that results. (Although it always spins me out of the play and sets me wondering about which stagehand has had to do the cooking and how they've kept the meal hot.) Which dinner parties have you most enjoyed on stage – and which put you off your grub for days afterward?